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* The conflict between humans and Charonians in Roger MacBride Allen's ''Hunted Earth'' series is a variant of this; the Charonians are a mixture of biological and mechanical creatures, and operate on a planetary scale - disassembling lifeless planets as building material for Dyson Spheres, and moving lifebearing planets to Sphere systems. The Charonians are barely aware of humanity when they begin disassembling the Solar System.
* [[Isaac Asimov]] disliked these stories, and created the [["Three Laws "-Compliant|Three Laws of Robotics]] as a counterargument, on the premise that robots' behavior can be effectively constrained with three simple rules. Still even without the crutch of [[Crush! Kill! Destroy!]] (which he described as "'clank, clank, aaargh!' [[Science Is Bad|There are some things man was not meant to know]]"), he produced some fifty stories in which they managed to cause all sorts of problems through conflicts between the laws, and their interactions with the world.
** Once the engineers in Asimov's universe had worked the glitches out, their robots obeyed the Three Laws ''very well.'' So well that the civilizations which relied on robot labour became almost pathologically averse to danger or even innovation -- their notion of "space exploration" eventually shrivelled down to, "Let's send robots to new planets to [[Terraform]] them and build cities for us, so we can move into a new place just like our old one."
** [[The Film of the Book]] plays with the Three Laws<ref> Almost to the point of abandoning them; in a sense the movie is [[In Name Only]]</ref> - {{spoiler|the reason that VIKI, the AI controlling the robots, turns against humanity is not in spite of the Three Laws, but ''because'' of them. She concludes that humanity will destroy itself in a nuclear war or in some other way unless it is constrained, and thus feels that imposing a curfew on the human race is the only way to protect it.}}
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* The [[Alternate Universe]] seen at the beginning of Kenneth Bulmer's ''The Diamond Contessa'' is a world in which humanity was wiped out in a [[Robot War]]. The robots, being solar-powered and nearly indestructible, are still an active threat.
* Even older than Capek, the Victorian writer Samuel Butler addressed in some of his writings the idea of machines experiencing Darwinian evolution and rebelling against humans. The "Butlerian Jihad" of [[Dune]] was intended as a [[Shout-Out]] to him.
* In [[Jack Chalker]]'s ''The Rings of the Master'' tetralogy, the artificial intelligence Master System was originally created to predict likely futures - and, unbeknownst to the military paying the bills, to help the scientists creating it find a way to save humanity from itself. Thanks to [[World War III]], the scientists were forced to set events in motion that led to the machine taking over the world. While Master System is ''not'' [["Three Laws "-Compliant]], it does have prioritized "core imperatives", the first two being 1) save humanity, and 2) prevent humanity from ever again being in a position to destroy itself. To execute these imperatives, Master System ''had'' to take over, and stay in power, as it could predict that it would be rendered ineffective if it allowed itself to be set aside. The story opens 900 years later, as a historian acquires documentation on the ''full'' set of core imperatives as part of a [[Gambit Roulette]] to overthrow the system.
* In the short story ''Second Variety'', written by [[Philip K. Dick]], mankind is in an eternal war with highly intelligent machines. It served as the inspiration for a film called ''[[Screamers]]''. The original story ends with a touch of irony: {{spoiler|the robots are about to win, but as the hero notes with grim amusement, the Second Variety has developed a weapon that only hurts the other varieties - the robots are preparing to make war against ''each other''.}}
* Again from Philip K. Dick comes the short story "The Defenders," in which the Eastern and Western Blocs had built robots called "leadies" to carry out [[World War III]] as proxies while humanity waited out the nuclear holocaust in underground shelters. {{spoiler|As soon as humanity went underground, the leadies stopped fighting and began repairing the damage already done, eventually presenting both sides with peace as a ''fait accompli'' and predicting that the accomplishments of a united humanity would be "unimaginably great."}}
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== [[Web Original]] ==
* In [[Team Starkid]]'s ''[[Starship]]'', the [[Robot War]] on Earth is part of the backstory. Escaping the war is a big incentive for people to join the Starship Rangers, and even though humanity eventually won and brought the robots under control using [["Three Laws "-Compliant|inhibitor chips]], people have an innate distrust of them. Pretty justifiable:
{{quote| '''Junior''': Megagirl, can you kill humans?<br />
'''Megagirl''': [["Three Laws "-Compliant|No.]] [[Kill All Humans|But I'd like to.]] }}
** It's also worth noting that humans were fighting against [[The Matrix|Sentinals]], [[Metal Gear|Metal Gears]], [[Gundam|Gundam Wing Zeroes]], and [[Transformers|Autobots]], all powered by [[Metroid Prime|Phazon]]. [[Sergeant Rock|Commander Up]] received his infamous [[Groin Attack|injury]] from a buzzsaw-wielding Optimus Prime. It's [[Serial Escalation|that kind]] [[Refuge in Cool|of show]].
{{quote| ''All hail [[Astro Boy]]!'' }}
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